


and since we've no place to go

by livenudebigfoot



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Class Differences, Established Relationship, Eventual Smut, M/M, and also one of you is obsessed with privacy and faked his own death, the intense awkwardness of spending your first christmas together as a couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:02:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28328694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livenudebigfoot/pseuds/livenudebigfoot
Summary: Fusco wants to seal his own mouth shut, wants to freeze this moment so he can study the seldom-seen scars on Finch’s back in the light of day. Then he thinks,Fuck it, I came this far,and he asks, “You free on Christmas?”(or: two very different human beings test the boundaries of their extremely tentative relationship by spending Christmas together)
Relationships: Harold Finch/Lionel Fusco
Comments: 37
Kudos: 23





	1. December 7

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dien/gifts).



He feels stupid asking, and he almost doesn’t. It feels like something you shouldn’t be allowed to ask for, like either you know or you don’t. It’s something reserved for normal people: people with mutual friends, people who share apartments, people who have met each other’s parents. People who call themselves couples. In this apartment that neither of them live in, that Finch bought specifically so they could fool around in a secret place where nobody knows them, Fusco’s never more aware that  _ that  _ isn’t them. They don’t get to be normal. They don’t get to be a couple, not really. This is just something they do.

So he decides he won’t ask, that he’ll keep this question locked away with all the hundreds of other questions he’ll never ask Finch because he doesn’t want to look stupid, except. Except the ever-present Christmas music on his car’s radio got Fusco in a sentimental mood. And he got the news about what his kid’s Christmas plans were gonna be, and how he wasn’t gonna be a part of them. And then Finch wanted him to come up to the apartment so he did and it was one of those nights where Finch wants him to shut up and hold still and let Finch treat him like he’s made of glass, one of those nights when he really, really doesn’t understand what Finch wants out of him but it’s too good and beautiful to question. And they fell asleep next to each other, which they almost never do. And when he woke up, they were all warm and their legs were tangled together under the sheets and Finch blinked at him, lids heavy with sleep, and he murmured “Hello” and pressed a lazy kiss to Fusco’s mouth and curled up against him, in no hurry at all. And Lionel got hit with this weird feeling, high on joy and sick with grief all at once, and he had to bury his face in Finch’s throat and breathe deep. He smelled nice, like dusty old books and like green, bitter tea. Maybe that’s why.

When Finch inches out from under his arm and begins to slip out of bed, Lionel tells himself not to say anything, not to make himself seem needy and stupid. To let Finch go take his shower and leave for the day like he always does. When his hand slides to the small of Finch’s back, when the very tips of his fingers are his last points of contact, he blurts:

“Hey, you, uh…?”

Finch pauses, resting on the very edge of the bed. Fusco wants to seal his own mouth shut, wants to freeze this moment so he can study the seldom-seen scars on Finch’s back in the light of day. Then he thinks,  _ Fuck it, I came this far _ , and he asks, “You free on Christmas?”

Finch exhales, long and slow. He reaches for his glasses on the bedside table. Unfolding them gently, carefully, he murmurs, “I really couldn’t say.”

“‘Cause of work?” Lionel asks. No nod from Finch but he carries on like there was one because it’s less humiliating for both of them. “I get that. Me too. But, uh,” he says, pressing on, “supposing there isn’t work.”

Finch half-turns, his beaky profile pitying, or maybe fearful. “Surely,” Finch says, “you’d rather spend that day with your son.”

A soft bark of laughter. “Yeah. Yeah, I would.”

“But?”

“His mother’s taking him to Virginia to see her parents. I don’t get to see him again ‘til the New Year. So, uh, you’re my second choice.”

Finch snorts. “How gratifying.”

“Hey.” Fusco pokes him gently in the ribs and Finch jumps. “You came in ahead of sleeping in and getting some peace and quiet. You should be proud.”

“I know how you need your sleep,” Finch says, fondly, but in the warm, condescending tones of someone who doesn’t sleep at all.

“Anyway. You can say no if you have plans or you don’t want to, but, uh...I dunno. Thought it might be fun.” He rolls onto his stomach and cracks his back so he doesn’t have to look at Finch’s face.

After a long wait, Finch just goes “Ehm,” and Fusco exhales deep in the pillow because it was a stupid question and he definitely shouldn’t have asked it and Finch is definitely going to sell this apartment and move to Siberia because things got too  _ close  _ and when he says “It’s not that I don’t want to…” it sounds like a fucking death knell.

Fusco turns his head, rests it on top of his folded arms. “But you don’t want to.”

“No,” Finch says, firmly, his eyes blue and earnest. “I’m…” He stalls out, sputtering. “I’m very poor company,” he says.

Fusco squints up at him. “What’s that mean?”

“Just that I haven’t celebrated in a very long time. And I’ve grown used to spending that day alone, more or less as I would any other day. And I would be very...dull, I think. You wouldn’t...”

“Hey, I mean. I don’t need you to entertain me. I was just thinking, you know...maybe we have dinner together. Or spend the day in bed, whatever. I don’t need you on the roof stringing Christmas lights.”

“That seems dangerous,” Finch says. “And unlikely to be looked on with charity by our landlord.”

“Yeah, that’s another reason why. My point is, you know, we could spend time together. If you wanted to.”

“And if neither of us were called into action,” Finch says.

“Goes without saying.”

“Hmm.” Finch leans against the headboard, his soft stomach rising and falling. “You make it sound very simple.”

“It can be that way,” Fusco says, squeezing the pillow, “if you don’t make it hard for yourself.”

Finch sits quiet, making soft, thoughtful sounds. “Christmas Eve or Christmas Day?”

“Either. You got a preference or you want me to check what shifts I have to pick up?”

“At your convenience. Please. Would you...would you want to exchange gifts?”

“I don’t need to make it a big thing, but, uh, if you…”

Finch’s eyes glint with suppressed excitement. Because he likes giving Fusco gifts - pretty ones, filthy ones, actually useful ones - and he likes having excuses to do that without Fusco fighting him tooth and nail. “I do...that is, I wouldn’t mind…”

It’s a weird way to bribe somebody but Fusco says, “Yeah, OK, let’s do that.”

Finch folds his hands on his bare, hairy knees, pleased. “Very well, then.”

“Alright.” He tries to keep himself from grinning outright, has to hide his mouth behind his hand.

They sit there, dead silent and beaming, for a few long seconds before Finch asks “Are you showering today?” which sounds like he’s taking some shots at Fusco’s personal hygiene, but he’s come to see it as an invitation.

Fusco pushes himself up on his knees and stretches, long and slow and lazy. “Yeah,” he says, reaching for Finch’s outstretched hand. “I could shower.”


	2. December 10

Finch texts him to meet at an address as soon as his shift ends and Fusco doesn’t question it. He’s used to Finch’s texts: bossy, short, good punctuation. Locations, dates and times, neat and carefully worded instructions. Maybe he tacks on an “if you’re amenable” if he’s feeling casual. There’s no “if you’re amenable”, so he asks if he should come armed.

“No,” Finch replies. “I just need you to lift something.”

So that’s different. Fusco’s feeling curious, so he speeds through his paperwork and puts his coat on a little bit early. He doesn’t find out how different until he finds that the address is actually a lot filled with smushed, twine-wrapped Christmas trees. Until he sees Finch standing beside a particularly tall tree, snow dusted onto the broad brim of his hat and hands jammed into his pockets. “They wouldn’t deliver it,” he explains.

Fusco stands there looking at him a while.

Finch blinks, doubt trickling into his expression. “Is it too far to ask you to carry it?” he asks. “I’d take care of it myself, but…”

His cheeks are pink from cold. Fusco kisses just one of them. He can hear Finch’s tiny gasp pop against his ear.

“I got it,” he says, pulling the tree onto his shoulder. It’s heavier than he thinks it will be and he suppresses a groan. “Lead the way.”

Finch walks beside him, warning him off slippery patches and shepherding him through wide turns and asking every five minutes if it’s too heavy and Fusco has to hide his grin in the collar of his jacket. 

The security guy at the apartment building takes pity on Fusco and lets them into the freight elevator. Fusco rests the tree on the scummy metal floor while Finch scans his keycard and punches in the number and, rubbing his shoulder, he says, “So I thought you didn’t celebrate.”

“I don’t,” Finch says. “Generally. But, seeing as we are…”

“Uh huh.” He rolls his shoulder, feels the joint crack.

“I just thought that we might as well.”

“Yeah?”

Finch takes his hat off, turns it gently in his hands. “It was a...a spontaneous decision. Perhaps I shouldn’t have. I didn’t think you’d have to...I didn’t think.”

“Hey,” Fusco says. “Lay off yourself, alright? This’ll be fun. I never did this before.”

He stills, the brim of his hat slightly twisted in his hands. “Oh?”

“Yeah. We stopped doing a real tree when I was maybe 8 or 9. I had three older brothers; there kinda wasn’t room. I remember we got a little artificial one for Lee’s first Christmas. I think it’s in storage or something.”

“Oh.” Finch lowers his eyes. “I never realized.”

The elevator doors rattle back as they arrive on their floor. Fusco lugs the tree onto his shoulder again. “It’ll be fun,” he repeats.

Inside the apartment, there is a chair haphazardly shifted across the living room to make an incongruously bare corner. A metal tree stand with the price sticker still on. A box of colored lights. A watering can.

A spontaneous decision. 

Fusco looks over his shoulder at Finch, with his hat hair and his red ears. “Alright,” he says. “How do you set this thing up?”

Finch unzips his boots and leaves them at the door. “Set it down,” Finch says as he tugs at his leather gloves. “You’re tracking slush.”

He leaves the tree propped against the wall and yanks off his boots.

The process of putting up a Christmas tree, it turns out, involves Finch crankily lying facedown on the floor fiddling with a set of metal screws and asking Fusco to turn the tree this way and that way and tilt it  _ just a little more to the right, won’t you? _ until finally Finch rolls over onto his back and calls it good. He takes a rain check from the rest of it in favor of curling up in a chair and telling Fusco what string of lights to drape where and Fusco’s no electrician or decorator or whatever, but he thinks he does a decent enough job.

Fusco’s leaning over the back of Finch’s chair, arms draped around Finch, face buried in Finch’s hair, when Finch hums thoughtfully and says, “Looks a little bare, doesn’t it?”

He’s not wrong. The string lights cast this pink and green and blue and bright white glow all over the floor and the walls and Finch’s glasses and his skin, but Fusco’s got this idea that a Christmas tree is, generally speaking, supposed to be like a clusterfuck of hanging things: bright, chintzy, happy shit. Fusco’s got this other idea that Finch is the kind of guy who, if he’s gonna go out of his way and do something, figures he might as well do it right. 

Fusco nuzzles against his cheek. “Don’t you dare come back here with a thousand dollars in Christmas ornaments.”

“Well.” Finch catches his wrist in one soft, mug-warm hand and holds it high against his chest, close to his throat. “Perhaps a  _ thousand  _ is a bit extravagant, but…”

“I got some we can use.”

“Do you?”

“I think I do,” he amends, fiddling gently with the top button on Finch’s shirt. “Old shit. My mother’s. You mind?”

Finch sits up a little straighter, inches back against him. “No, of course not. Why would I mind?”

“Well,” Fusco says, “I know you care about the look of things.”

“I do.” He cradles Fusco’s cheek in his palm. “I promise not to complain unless they’re very ugly.”

“Aw,” he says as the button comes loose, as he slips his hand down the front of Finch’s shirt, as Finch kisses him slow and lazy on the mouth. “Thanks, pal.”


	3. December 11

It’s still dark outside when he gets to the storage unit. It’s a little one, barely bigger than a bedroom closet, but it’s really all he needed. One thing the divorce did was make it crystal clear what he needed to hang on to and what he could do without. Some of that stuff ended up in his apartment. A lot of it got thrown out. His small collection of in-between things - useless stuff with memories stuck to it - stays here. Mostly, he doesn’t check up on it.

Because of that, it’s still pretty neat inside, boxes stacked and garbage bags tied tight. He can’t even remember what’s in all of them. Lee’s old things, clothes and toys and books, he thinks, stored up with the idea that there would be a nephew or a niece someday who needs them. And his mom’s old stuff - jewelry that nobody wants to wear but everyone figures should be kept, china that’s too delicate to eat off of and too nice to throw away. The kinds of things you only keep if you’re a little afraid that the person who owned them will come back and haunt you if you don’t. There's a chair nobody has space for. An ancient punching bag from Lionel’s bachelor apartment, sagging at the seams. Maybe a box of his dad’s stuff, if that. His dad wasn’t a saver. Old, irrelevant things.

He finds the box he’s looking for, green and flat and hastily taped shut. The cardboard is cool and uncomfortably soft from damp and for a second he’s a little scared of what he’ll find inside. But it’s alright, once he snaps the tape and lifts the lid. Both alright and not alright, with a sensation that’s a little like being tugged backwards. Funny how these things he hasn’t seen or even thought about in years can bring him back, can make him suddenly feel a flush of warmth, catch a momentary whiff of pine and popcorn and his mother’s baking.

He heads to work, leaves the box on the back seat of his car all day and when the lights go down and the bullpen empties out piece by piece and his feet hurt, he heads over to the apartment.

It’s eerie to come in and find the apartment all dark. He’s not here alone all that often. A few months ago, when he was working a tough case and didn’t feel like going all the way home just to fall into bed. Every now and again, when he gets here a second before Finch does. Finch tells him to think of it as a place to rest if he needs it, that it’s a place for both of them. But it’s hard to feel at home here. The place has a smooth, stylish, angular quality, a kind of trendy hotel feel. It forgets him the second he’s gone. 

It’s funny. He feels a little bit as though he’s never been here before every time he walks in the door.

Fusco flips on lights the second he walks in, just to warm up the place, and takes the box into the kitchen to start unloading dusty ornaments and assessing damages.

It’s not as bad as he feared. He pictured mold spores and shattered glass. The glass ornaments, red and green, gold and silver, are covered in a layer of slightly sticky dust, but aside from a small minority that are spiderwebbed with cracks, they’re in good shape. The wooden ornaments are a little troubled - faded paint and missing limbs - but mostly they’re OK too. And there’s a garland, mangled and crispy with age, pretty much unsalvageable. He tosses that in the trash, lets the glass balls soak in warm, soapy water, and sets about delicately rehabilitating the wooden ornaments with the corner of a damp paper towel. 

He almost drops his work when he hears the door unlock and creak open. A moment of hesitation. 

“It’s me,” Fusco calls and he hears Finch’s sigh of relief.

“I didn’t know you’d be here,” Finch says. Fusco listens to him shuffle his feet, knock the slush out of his boots. 

“Kind of a spur of the moment thing,” Fusco says, polishing a wooden angel shorter than his thumb. “Didn’t know you’d be here either.”

Finch is still rustling around in the next room, putting down coats and bags and fussing like he does, making everything just so. “I’m not certain I planned to be here. It just...happened.” Finch peers around the kitchen doorway. His hair is mashed flat to his head and his shirt is a little rumpled and he has a high pink flush in his face. He has a grocery bag tucked against his side. “How do you feel about hot cider?” he asks, for lack of something better to say.

“I feel fine about it,” Fusco says. “How do you feel about decorating the tree once this stuff dries?”

“I think that would be a fine way to spend an evening.” Finch sets his groceries on the counter and peers into the sink where the Christmas ornaments are soaking. “These were your mother’s?” he asks.

“Yeah.” Fusco clears his throat. “She hung onto stuff.”

“They’re lovely,” Finch says, plucking one ball out and gently drying it on a towel.

“Yeah, alright.”

“They’re simple.” Finch crosses the kitchen and leans down to press a kiss to the crown of Fusco’s head. “And they’re yours.”

“Sure,” he says, feeling his face go warm. “Sure, OK. What about your thing? You come over to drink hot cider alone?”

Finch begins unpacking: a gallon of cider, yes, but also oranges, sugar, and spices. “To  _ make  _ hot cider alone, thank you. When I was young,” Finch begins, and Fusco tries to imagine a young Finch and stalls out at merely a smaller Finch in a tiny suit, “the farm where we’d go to get our tree sold hot cider. We’d spend what felt like hours walking among the rows, looking for the right tree, freezing our fingers to the bone and...well, the cider was nice, after all that.”

A quiet, slightly anxious silence hangs between them and Fusco goes back over the sentence to see if Finch let anything slip about where he’s from or who he was, but there’s nothing concrete, nothing that would be obvious to anyone else.

“I’m sharing,” Finch adds primly.

Fusco feels a smile slide crookedly across his face. “Good job, pal.”

“Obviously, I don’t have the recipe for  _ that  _ cider, but the recipe I found seemed simple enough. All the same, I thought I’d…practice,” he finishes sheepishly.

“You don’t have to do a test run,” Fusco says. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“I want it to be  _ right _ ,” Finch says, a little tense now. “I’m not a chef.”

“Me neither. ‘S OK.”

Finch squints at him as if to say  _ But you are _ , because Finch thinks that just because he can’t cook or doesn’t cook, anyone who can and does has a goddamn Michelin star in their back pocket. Finch hasn’t figured out that if he tried even a little bit, he could outclass Fusco in this way, just like he does in every other way.

“Well.” Fusco stands with a soft grunt. “Let’s get started.”

At first, they remain in their respective spheres, with Fusco drying and polishing and arranging ornaments on the coffee table in front of the tree, ready to hang, while Finch stirs sugar and spices into apple cider that’s coming to boil. But after a little bit Finch leans out of the kitchen and offers a few choice remarks about where a tiny wooden ornament might be better supported and Fusco notices that Finch is taking an awfully long time to jab cloves into an orange, so gradually, almost thoughtlessly, they swap places. 

Fusco adds maple syrup to the cider, not ‘cause it’s in the recipe but because he knows better, and he listens to Finch humming and tsking and being thoughtful and he feels warm all of a sudden, all through his body. Like he could close his eyes and drift off here, not because he’s so goddamn tired, but because he feels so goddamn comfortable. It’s peace, but with it comes a lightheaded excitement. 

Fusco pours two mugs of cider, garnishes each with a cinnamon stick, and goes out in the living room where the tree has become more glittering, more dim, bristling with history. Finch surveys it, arms crossed, mouth curved and thoughtful.

“Looks nice,” Fusco says, pressing a mug into Finch’s hands.

“Thanks to you,” Finch amends, modestly. His eyes are glistening intensely behind his glasses. “The ornaments were perfect."

Fusco shrugs, takes his place beside Finch to avoid that gaze. “They were what I had.”

Finch tilts against him and rests his head on Fusco’s shoulder, content. “Perfect, then." He takes a breathy sip of his cider. “This is lovely.”

“Anything like what you used to have at that tree farm as a kid?” Fusco asks.

“Close,” Finch says. “Nostalgia is a funny thing. I’m sure it was never particularly good in the first place. This is better.”

“You picked a good recipe.”

“I picked a perfectly suitable recipe and a thoughtful, talented human being to bully into preparing it for me.”

Fusco slings an arm around Finch, pulls him close. “Shut up.”


	4. December 15

Finch slides out of Fusco’s sleepy, unresisting arms with a slightly pathetic groan. Fusco lets his eyelids drift open, just a crack, and blearily watches Finch sit on the edge of the bed, rubbing his arms as he adjusts to the cold. He waits while Finch stretches, while he stands up with a whine, while he limps stiffly into the bathroom, and Fusco doesn’t spring into action until he hears the bathroom door click shut. Seconds later, he’s hanging halfway off the bed, pawing through the puddle of clothes on the floor until he finds Finch’s shirt and grabs it by the collar. Fusco squints at the tag, holding it closer, then further away, until he can make out the embroidered cursive.

“Phineas Cole.” Fuck. He’s never gonna remember that. He scrambles for his phone.

If he were a smart guy, Fusco thinks bitterly as he hunts and pecks out a memo, trying to convince autocorrect that Phineas is a real name, he probably would’ve been taking note of this kind of thing for a long time. He’d probably know all the places Finch gets his clothes. But who notices that kind of thing?

Finch. Finch notices that kind of thing. Finch throws that information directly in the trash as far as Fusco’s concerned, because Finch has never been overly impressed with how Fusco dresses himself, but Finch notices all the same. 

This is a nightmare. He knew it would be a nightmare. He should have fought Finch on the whole gift exchange thing from the start.

It’s not like he doesn’t know what Finch likes. He knows a lot about what Finch likes. Finch likes nice clothes, Finch likes computers, Finch likes art, Finch likes baseball, Finch likes birds, Finch likes music on vinyl. Finch likes  _ him _ , for some reason. 

But Finch  _ has  _ all of that. Finch has all the suits and gadgets and museum memberships and season tickets and rare ornithological texts a son of a bitch could ask for. And even if he doesn’t, that can all change in a second. 

Take the record collection, for instance. It just showed up a few months ago, like one day there was a bare wall and then the next there was a shelf with a high end turntable and around twenty records and Fusco asked “Where did this come from?” and Finch shrugged and said, “The wall seemed bare,” and Fusco flipped through the records and they played a couple and Fusco teased Finch into dancing with him, except neither of them dance so it was more the two of them rocking back and forth, holding each other, and yeah, okay, it was a pretty nice night, but. But. He’s looked over that record collection a bunch of times since then and it’s never been the same collection twice. There’s always something new, something missing, and they’re always pristine, always perfectly suited to Finch’s tastes while accommodating Fusco’s, and Fusco knows this means that somewhere, someplace, there’s a Library of Congress-sized collection of every record known to man, and it’s got Finch’s name on it, and  _ Fusco can’t compete with that _ .

Even himself. Like if he got really pathetic, really desperate, really sappy, he could give promises instead. _ I will learn how to cook you the meal of your choice. I will rub your back when it’s sore. I will let you do whatever the hell you want with me, no questions asked, on the night of your choosing. _ Finch would like that, he thinks. But it’s not all that good a gift, he figures, if it’s something he does all the time. Like every time Finch tells him he’s a good cook, or every time Finch winces, or every time Finch gets that look in his eye. He is  _ easy _ . 

Fusco flops onto his back and googles Phineas Cole, hoping for an easy out. Maybe this will be it, maybe he’ll see something, like a shirt or a tie or a suit, and it’ll be just obvious and Finch won’t know what a schlub he is, how ill-equipped. 

He must know. He can’t not.

But, you know. Maybe he’d like a new tie. Even if it’s kind of similar to a tie he already has. Maybe.

As it turns out, ties from Phineas Cole cost around $175 each. Which is the other part of what makes this so hard. Even if he could come up with something Finch wants that Finch doesn’t already have, that thing would be way outside what he could give. 

Probably the worst part of this is that he’s tying himself in knots over nothing. Finch doesn’t care. Finch knows he’s impossible to shop for. Finch’s present - Finch’s real present - is getting to buy a bunch of stuff for Fusco without Fusco complaining. And Finch is really, seriously gonna love that. And he’s not gonna expect anything else, or care if Fusco got him the right thing or the most expensive thing. He could get Finch nothing, get Finch flowers from the bodega, get Finch a blowjob and Finch would be just as happy as he would be if Fusco blew his paycheck on a stupid tie Finch probably already owns. 

It’s nothing. It’s just that he can’t overwhelm Finch the way Finch overwhelms him.

It’s just that Christmas is ten days away and he let this part of it slip away from him somehow. 

He checks Armani’s website, ‘cause that’s a brand he’s heard of, at least. Their ties run closer to $200.

A little disgusted, he sets his phone aside and rolls out of bed. He’s a little bit gimpy and ruined, like he gets when he’s been in bed too long, but there’s a kind of a swagger to it, ‘cause some of that time spent in bed was pretty active. He slips into the bathroom, all warm and wet and velvety with steam.

He feels the need to putter around for a while. He’s never surprised Finch in the shower before - actually surprised him - and in the abstract, that seems like a disaster waiting to happen. So he checks his sleepy, creased face in the bathroom mirror, bends over the sink and throws a handful of cold water on his face, and when he looks up again, Finch is peering curiously at him from around the curtain. 

“Good morning,” Finch says, a little hopeful, a little cautious. Like he wouldn’t be averse to some company, but he’d also be graceful about it if Fusco said no thanks. Finch is kind of a pessimist in some ways, Fusco guesses.

Casually, Fusco steps over the edge of the tub and Finch’s face brightens. He’s got a funny little face, Fusco thinks, ferociously. It’s pointy and soft, expressive and unreadable all at once, and his eyes look stupid and puffy and naked without glasses, with his eyelashes all wet. Fusco takes Finch’s funny face in his hands and holds him for a moment, presses their foreheads together.

Finch’s hands curl shyly around Fusco’s wrists. “It  _ is  _ a good morning, I hope?” And he presses his nose into Fusco’s cheek and nuzzles there.

“Yeah,” Fusco breathes, pushing his face flush against Finch’s. He’s not sure what he’s looking for. Security maybe, reassurance by way of Finch’s warm, wet, soap-smelling skin. Something, god, something. He sinks to his knees.

“Oh.” Finch peers down at him, still holding his wrists. He’s confused, but not in a bad way, Fusco figures. “Don’t trouble yourself.”

Fusco pulls his hands free, gets a good grip on Finch’s ass. His body is only half-interested, maybe less than half, but that’s a usual thing with Finch and Fusco knows he can get him where he needs to go. He’s done it before.

He takes Finch in his mouth, listens to Finch’s eager sigh, feels Finch’s hands drift down to cradle the back of his head in a not-too-demanding way. It’s familiar territory. Soothing, almost. There’s something weirdly comfortable about being on his knees in front of Finch, working at him gently with his tongue, feeling him thicken and stiffen in his mouth, listening as Finch’s breathing shivers and quickens. And there’s a measure of satisfaction to dragging pleasure out of him, slow and insistent, holding him up when his knees start to go, teasing him until he cries out, sticking with him until his jaw aches and his throat is raw and his knees have indents from the rubber mat in the bottom of the bathtub and Finch is coming and all he feels is pride.

And security, he supposes. Or something a little like it. 

He helps Finch sit beside him on the bathroom floor, ready to rub his wobbly legs or fetch painkillers, but Finch only throws his arms around Fusco’s neck, only drags him close. And he whispers, face buried in Fusco’s hair, “I am going to absolutely dismantle you.”

Fusco blinks. “Oh yeah? What for?”

“Because,” he says, “I am terribly fond of you.”

And that’s security too, in its way.


	5. December 20

There’s a slightly involved and very stupid game they play sometimes. The way they play it is: Finch will want to talk to Fusco about something that Fusco would classify as “kind of important,” like probably someone’s life is at stake, but not in an urgent way. And Finch will want to talk about it on some street lined with stores that sell shoes with a price tag that would make Fusco want to throw up, or else it sells suits handcrafted by Italian wizards or something. And they walk together.

The object of Finch’s game is to fill Fusco in on whatever the kind of important thing is while watching his face, carefully noting what perfect, expensive thing in the shop window that his eyes get snagged on. The object of Fusco’s game is to listen, and not let his eyes get snagged on anything.

Fusco’s gotten pretty good at his half of the game, and it drives Finch up the wall. Like now. Finch taps him hard on the arm and says, “Don’t be difficult.”

Fusco nudges him back. “Who’s difficult?”

Finch exhales through his nose. “You are. Deliberately.”

It’s not like Finch to call attention to the game, so Fusco steps up to maintain the fiction. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

A very deep sigh. “Would it really kill you to let me know what you want?”

“I’m easy,” Fusco tells him. “Don’t worry about it. Whatever you pick out will be fine.”

Finch makes a small, disgusted sound. “You’re impossible.”

“ _ You’re _ cutting it close, pal. Christmas is five days away.” Fusco feels a sudden surge of satisfaction. His panic over gifts proved to be a real kick in the ass and everything’s either taken care of or in the mail. He finally beat Finch to something and he feels pretty good about it.

“I didn’t wait,” Finch says, sounding slightly offended. “I’m just...second guessing, I suppose.” He tugs at Fusco’s arm just a little and Fusco takes the hint, links his arm around Finch’s. “I find I often get you things that I want you to have rather than things you actually need.”

And that’s pretty hard to argue with. Finch has bought Fusco a lot of crazy shit over the years, and most of it is stuff he never in a million years would’ve thought to ask for. Finch buys him guns and phones and spy shit same as everyone else - probably less than everyone else - and he needs that. Finch once paid to have some fairly major repairs done to Fusco’s car, because it got fucked up in the line of duty. That’s it, in terms of necessary gifts. Even the car thing kinda makes his skin crawl. “I kinda like it that way,” Fusco says, after thinking a minute. “I like that you always come up with stuff I never would’ve asked for.”

“Do you? Sometimes it feels as though you’re humoring me.”

“I try to go along with it,” he says, “if that’s what you mean. And I always have a good time, whatever it is. I trust you. You have some weird ideas, but they’re good-weird. You know?” Fusco risks a glance at Finch and finds he’s being stared at pretty fondly. “Don’t get sappy on me now.”

Finch squeezes Fusco’s arm gently. 

“I could use some shoes,” Fusco says finally.

Finch perks up. “Oh?”

“Yeah. For work, you know. Nothing fancy or flashy, just something I can walk around in and be comfortable but still look alright in a suit.”

Finch nods slowly, mind already ticking away. “Brown or black?” he asks.

“Brown.”

“Thought so,” Finch murmurs. He has a faraway inward kind of look, like he’s thumbing through Fusco’s wardrobe in his imagination and taking careful stock.

“For the record,” Fusco says, “this is all pretty rich coming from you, the guy who has everything and is impossible to shop for.”

“I am not impossible.”

“Yeah? What do you want for Christmas, smart guy?”

Finch hesitates. “I don’t want you to feel obligated to get me anything…”

Fusco gives his leg a soft tap with one foot. “See?”

“If you’re searching for a push in the right direction,” Finch says, “perhaps something in the realm of...shared experiences?”

“So I’m on the right track.” And then, “Shoes aside, you get me anything crazy?”

Finch glances down at his shoes, a shy smile creeping over his face. “I’ve made an effort to be...innovative. In some of my choices.”

“Yeah?” He rests his head against Finch’s, nuzzles against his ear. “Innovative how?”

Finch gives him a gentle slap on the shoulder. “Tradition dictates that you have to wait,” but the way his voice buckles, shivers, lets Fusco know that he wishes he could give it to him now.


	6. December 25

The plan they settled into - with surprising ease, with terrifying ease - was to convene at the apartment on the evening of the 24th and spend as much time together as possible until Fusco’s work schedule or Finch’s weird shit got in the way.

But, you know. Things don’t work out. That’s a fundamental law of the universe, like gravity. 

Gravity comes in the form of a phone call from Reese asking him to pull some records and then a follow-up phone call that gets cut off real suddenly and then a couple hours of frantic searching that ends with Fusco at a warehouse by the docks, crouching behind a support beam while Russian mobsters take potshots at him for reasons that aren’t totally clear, but it gives Reese enough time to get himself uncuffed from the chair, so Fusco guesses all’s well that ends well.

It’s around one in the morning when they walk out of the warehouse, Reese casually stepping over a groaning Russian while Fusco calls it in anonymously because he’s been connected to a couple of big arrests lately and he doesn’t want to seem too productive.

“Is that everything?” Fusco asks, pocketing his phone.

“You’re off the hook.” Reese says, casually. He notices a spot of blood on his cuff and rubs at it. “I think Finch wants a word.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Reese rolls his shoulders, cracks his neck, groans in satisfaction. “He’s moody. The whole Christmas thing.”

Fusco hesitates, unsure of what Reese knows. “What Christmas thing?”

Reese blinks down at him, eyes tired. “He asked my opinion on a tie. If you don’t like it, he’ll blame me.” His tone suggests that if Fusco is not gracious in his acceptance of the tie, there will be some kind of reckoning.

“Alright,” Fusco says. “Thanks for your input, pal.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” Reese says. And then, over his shoulder, “Sorry you got shot.”

He only got shot once, square in the vest, and yeah, his chest crackles just a little if he breathes in too deeply, but he’s come away from adventures with Reese way worse than that before. Again, all’s well that ends well.

_ Where are you? _ he texts Finch.

Finch responds with the name of a coffee shop that’s not too far from the apartment. It’s a friendly, warm, dirty little place that’s existed on that corner since the beginning of time. It’s not Finch’s type of place at all.

_ You still want to get together today? _ Fusco asks.  _ It’s OK if you’re tired. _

Finch responds,  _ Just come get me. _

So he does. 

The weather turns. It was ugly before, a kind of murky trickle that soaks into everything, turns everything gray. But the temperature dips and suddenly the air is wet and snappish from freezing rain and the streets and sidewalks are shiny and slick with ice. The city is never truly empty but in the dark, empty street, with its shuttered shop windows and its parked, embattled cars, it feels as though it might be. It feels like it’s just him. 

But of course it isn’t so. There’s people walking past him from time to time, hunched against the weather. There’s bodegas and bars still open, the kinds where the owners live above the shop and God himself couldn’t close the place down. And then there’s a familiar window, golden yellow and impossibly bright, with Finch framed in it. He sits perched on a stool, a paper cup cradled in his hands, squinting blearily out into the night.

A bell chimes, bright and cheerful, as he shoves open the door and the guy minding the counter acknowledges him with a grunt and a nod. Finch clambers off his high stool tiredly, clumsily. “You’re here,” he says.

Fusco eyes the cluster of empty paper coffee cups on the counter. “You’re desperate.”

“I’m so tired,” Finch sighs, nestling against Fusco’s side. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” he says, as Finch’s arms compress his vest and press against the sore spot on his ribs. “What about you?”

Finch groans. “I’m sorry things didn’t go to plan.”

“Hey, it’s OK. I kinda counted on something like this happening.” He lets his hand skim over the back of Finch’s head. “You wanna go back to the apartment?”

“Please,” Finch sighs. “Walk me home.”

So he does.

It’s not the romantic walk Finch maybe envisioned, the two of them walking, arms clasped, huddled together, lit by the orange glow of street lamps. If that’s what Finch envisioned, he was pretty spot-on about the arm clasping and the huddling, but it’s too wet, too slippery, too bitterly cold to be anything but a desperate and miserable attempt to stay upright and half-warm.

But they make it. In the foyer they stomp the slush out of their boots. In the elevator Finch rakes wet, clumpy snow out of Fusco’s hair while Fusco diligently brushes snow from Finch’s shoulders, the brim of his hat, the collar of his coat. In the front door of the apartment, they stagger out of boots and let their coats drop and Finch gasps a little.

“Hmm?” Fusco asks, and he follows Finch’s gaze to his chest, to the slug buried in his vest. “Oh,” he says. “Yeah.”

Finch advances on him, eyes all round. “How did this happen?” he asks, resting his palms flat against the vest, tenderly, like Fusco can feel it somehow.

“It’s not so bad,” Fusco protests, trying to head off disaster. “I don’t think anything’s broken.”

Finch is already tugging at the straps, helping him slip out of the vest. “You can’t know that.”

“I’ve got a good feel for these things.” But he doesn’t protest as Finch fiddles open the buttons on his shirt. “It’s not my first time being shot.” Probably not the last either, but he doesn’t say that. That kind of talk gets Finch all riled up and he’s fussy enough as it is. He lets himself be dragged out of his shirt, lets Finch hike his undershirt up over his ribs. Better to let him see for himself, calm himself down.

Finch hisses between his teeth, winces sympathetically as he probes gently at Fusco’s chest, already swollen and going purple. ”Poor dear,” he murmurs.

“ _ Poor dear _ ,” Fusco repeats. “Can it be poor badass, just for tonight? I held my own against like eight guys and I think I did pretty OK.”

Finch leans into him, slides his arms around Fusco’s neck. “I’m just glad you’re in one piece.”

Fusco wraps him up close, squeezes. “You and me both, buddy.”

They just stand there for a moment, drinking in each other’s heat and the safe, eerie quiet of their padded little apartment. 

“Do you want to turn in?” Finch asks against his cheek.

Fusco releases him, just a little. “I’m kinda keyed up, actually. Mind if I stay up a little while? You can go ahead to bed, if you want to.”

“No, I’m...I’m a little overcaffeinated myself. Would you care to…?”

“...You wanna do presents and all that?”

“I…” He flushes. “I’m sorry, I’m being foolish. You’re putting on a very brave face, but you’ve been shot. I’m sure this is the last thing you want to think about right now.”

“No,” Fusco says. “No, that’s kinda fine by me.”

“You’ve been  _ shot _ ,” Finch says, plaintively. 

“Yeah, but it’s Christmas,” he says. “You mind if my presents aren’t wrapped?”

Finch pauses, slightly dumbfounded. “I don’t,” he says, at last.

There’s a little bit of slightly childish shuffling as they retreat to their respective hiding places. Fusco’s amounts to a single shopping bag, itself protectively wrapped in a plastic trash bag and hidden beneath the sink where he knew Finch would never look. He listens to Finch fussing around in the bedroom, a rustle of tissue paper as he limps into the living room.

“Stay where you are for a moment,” Finch says. “I’m not done.”

“Fine.” He listens as Finch makes another trip, sets things - multiple things - down. Fusco hastily discards the trash bag. Perfectly clean, but it’s better if Finch doesn’t see it. 

“Don’t look!” Finch calls, heading back to the bedroom.

“Jesus Christ.” Fusco reaches into the shopping bag. It’s more than one thing, which is nice. All small. A few packages, a few envelopes. It doesn’t matter, he tells himself. Finch won’t care. 

“You can look now,” Finch says, at last. 

Fusco sticks his head out of the kitchen and catches Finch strolling out of the bedroom empty-handed. “What are you doing in there?”

“Never you mind,” Finch says primly. And then, gesturing to a small mound of meticulously-wrapped gifts on the couch, he says “Shall we?”

So they sit, Fusco’s brown paper shopping bag rustling between his feet. Beside each other, on the over-plump cushions, they hesitate.

“Do you…?” Fusco begins.

“If you don’t mind,” Finch finishes, thrusting a box into his hands. “Boring one first,” he says, shyly, as if any of this could be boring.

Although, Fusco thinks as he slides his thumb under a seam in the wrapping paper and starts to tear, he’s pretty sure he knows what’s inside, just from the shape and the weight and the way the thing inside slides when he tilts the box.

He lifts the lid off the box and yeah, shoes, golden brown and glossy with an earthy smell that tells him he’s in the presence of real leather, not that cheap shit. Not the shit he never minded - still doesn’t - except Finch wants him to have nice things, so that...means something.

“They’re not  _ too  _ nice,” Finch says as Fusco turns the shoes over in his hands. “I know you don’t want to attract attention. And they  _ are  _ for work, so I imagine they’ll undergo some wear and tear.”

Fusco slips his fingers inside one shoe, feels plush insoles. “Whoa.”

“Thick soles.” Finch beams at him, pleased he noticed, pleased he thought to check. “And I had the insides customized, since they’d be covert. I’ve heard you complain about your feet after work, so I thought…”

Fusco hugs him with one arm, rough-gentle in the way he’s learned to be around Finch. “They’re great. Thank you.”

Slightly muffled, tucked against his neck, Finch says, “I just want you to be comfortable.”

They part, and Fusco reaches into his gift bag. His fingers fumble twice before taking hold of an envelope and that’s how Fusco learns his hands are shaking. He shouldn’t be this nervous. It isn’t right. It’s only a Christmas present for his…

Well.

Whatever Finch is.

He pulls the envelope out of the bag and pushes it into Finch’s hands. He’s not even sure which one it is. 

Finch tears it open neatly, pulls out a neatly printed certificate on thick paper. “Cooking lessons?” Finch says.

“Yeah.” Fusco feels heat creeping up the back of his neck. “It’s like a couples thing. They walk you through it. I figured I could pick up a few new recipes, you could maybe get a little more comfortable in the kitchen and uh...oh, yeah,” he says as Finch shuffles through the cards. “Vouchers for a couple of different classes. I wasn’t sure what you’d want to make and I know scheduling is tough, so - ” 

Finch throws his arms around Lionel’s neck. ”It’s perfect.”

“I’m glad you like it.”

“I’m terrified you’ll learn how truly useless I am in the kitchen.”

“I’ll get over it.”

Something about this breaks the ice, makes the pace clear. Finch is going to get him thoughtful, expensive shit he doesn’t deserve. Fusco’s going to get Finch trite, coupley shit, the best he can do. And - somehow - they’re both OK with that.

Finch hands him something square and completely flat and instructs him not to break it. Fusco opens it up to reveal Back in Black on vinyl.

“For the shelf,” Finch says, inclining his head towards the record player. 

“Thank you,” Fusco murmurs as he spins the record between his fingers and wonders where his own copy is, dusty or broken or lost.

“At a reasonable volume.”

“I’ll show you what reasonable is.” Fusco bounces a ball of wrapping paper off Finch’s shoulder.

Fusco hands him an envelope with logistical information regarding a three hour birdwatching tour of Central Park. “You pay on the morning of, so I figured it’d be easy to swing if we had the time,” Fusco says. “Would you be OK for that, with your leg?”

Finch’s ears turn pink.

Finch hands him a slim, flat box, twists his hands nervously as Fusco opens it up, unveiling a tie in rich, violent teal that he kinda likes purely because it’s a little weird.

“Good choice,” he says, darting in to kiss Finch’s cheek.  _ Merry Christmas, you big lunk _ , he thinks, remembering Reese.  _ You’re off the hook. _

He gives Finch a third envelope. “I know, I’m full of surprises today.”

Finch doesn’t say anything, just brushes his socked foot against Fusco’s shin.

Inside the envelope is just a note, handwritten. Fusco’s handwriting isn’t pretty, but he figures it’s legible.

_ I will go to a spa with you and I will let them do whatever you want to me and I will not complain. _

Finch cracks a smile at that. 

“Didn’t want to pick a place for you,” Fusco says. “I figured you’d have an opinion.”

“I do,” Finch says, folding the note between his fingers absently. “You don’t have to do that,” Finch says, “if it’s not something you’re interested in.”

“Don’t try to back out,” Fusco says. “I’m warming up to the idea.”

Finch reaches for the last package, a flat, light box, tied with a ribbon, and pushes it into Fusco’s hands wordlessly. Fusco tugs gently at the ribbon and pulls the lid off the box, unleashing a cloud of tissue paper and deep blue silk.

Fusco plucks at it, feels the material slide and twist between his fingertips, feels Finch lean in close to him. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?”

“Try it on?” Finch purrs in his ear.

Slow heat creeps across the back of Fusco’s neck, but what’s he gonna do,  _ not  _ try it on?

He says something like maybe he should go to the bathroom or the bedroom to really do the big reveal but Finch just murmurs, “Nonsense,” in that cloudy, slightly distracted way of his, so he strips down right there on the couch, surrounded by wrapping paper and bathed in a pinkish glow from the lights on the tree. He thinks about being embarrassed, a little shy at being beaten up and faintly grimy from a hard day, but Finch is looking at him with wide eyes, cheeks burning, so Fusco figures that’s permission to not be embarrassed at all.

The thing in the box is a robe, which is pretty tame by Finch’s standards. Once somebody’s given you underwear and thigh high stockings and corsets, a robe seems like a pretty normal thing. Still, there’s a thinness and a clinginess to the material, the way it shimmers and whispers against his skin when he puts it on, the way it comes down a little low when he ties it at the waist, the way the hem hangs just above his mid thigh, that lets him know this is most definitely a come-on. Which gets pretty well confirmed when he turns around like ta-da, big reveal, and Finch grabs him by the backs of his thighs and pulls him in real close.

“Not, uh, not that I wanna distract you or anything,” Fusco says as Finch nuzzles against his chest, “but if I don’t give you that last present now, I’m definitely going to forget.”

“You don’t have to get me anything,” Finch murmurs contentedly as he squeezes Fusco’s ass through the blue silk.

“Yeah, I know that,” Fusco says, resting a hand on Finch’s head and gently inclining him back until Finch is looking up at him, dark-eyed and flushed. “But I want to.”

Finch smiles up at him a little bit hopelessly, tugs at Fusco’s hand until he sits down beside him with a rustle of silk. “Show me,” he says.

Fusco’s hands are really shaking now, more from impatience than anything else, but the gift is old, he reminds himself. He has to be gentle. He scoops up the red leather book and pushes it into Finch’s hands. “So, this is a little weird,” he begins.

Finch lets the book fall open slowly, gently in his hands, so tenderly the spine doesn’t so much as squeak.

“I don’t, uh, know if it’s all that exciting or anything, but I have a friend who works for the library system and, you know, they just throw books out all the time, so I asked him ‘what do you got on birds that’s headed for the scrap heap’ and he gives me, uh…” 

Finch is gone, entranced by rough sketches of birds reproduced on an old printing press and worn out text about what birds this guy saw on what day a century ago in Central Park.

“Anyway, I thought it seemed like something you’d like.”

Finch sets the book delicately, tenderly aside before throwing his arms around Fusco’s neck and peppering his face with kisses, so Fusco figures he did good. 

“To my eternal frustration,” Finch murmurs as he slips his hand up under the edge of Fusco’s fancy new robe, as he kisses Fusco’s ear, “I’m not able to lift you up and carry you to the bedroom by force. Would you oblige?”

Fusco stands and Finch follows, insistent, and carrying may be off the table as far as Finch goes, but he’s got dragging and pulling down, mainly because wherever Finch wants to go, Fusco follows, so he walks backwards to the bedroom as Finch pushes him along with his hands and his mouth, and when the backs of his legs hit the edge of the bed, he allows himself to fall backwards.

The first thing he notices is that Finch, standing over him now, looks more smug than usual. The second thing that he notices is that there are more presents on the bed.

“Are you shitting me?” Fusco says.

“I assure you, I am not.” Finch sits neatly at the edge of the bed. “I thought we might play a game.”

“You really have to outdo me at everything?”

“I am not,” Finch says, skimming a reassuring, slightly determined palm over Fusco’s thigh, “outdoing you at anything. Would you like to hear the rules?”

Fusco exhales. “Sure.”

“Very well.” Finch folds his hands on his knee, very self-satisfied. “Each package contains a...I suppose the term  _ device  _ is broad enough to cover it. Whatever you open, we use. What do you think?”

Fusco casts a glance around at all the little boxes and wrapped, indistinct shapes. He starts to count, gets embarrassed somewhere between seven and eight when he sees there’s so much more left to go, that the tide of gifts cascades onto the floor beside the bed.

Finch follows his gaze. “Oh, no. Nothing on the floor is in play.” 

“ _ Oh, no? _ ”

Finch rolls his shoulders. “This was initially a much more interesting game, but...you’re hurt. We’re both very tired. We’re shorter on time than I initially thought. I opted to remove anything challenging. For now.”

Fusco could admit to being a little bit grateful for that. He doesn’t, but...he could. He picks up the small box that slid across the covers to rest against his thigh when he sat down and starts unwrapping. “You’re ridiculous,” he says. “How long did you spend wrapping all of these?”

Finch snorts. “None at all. I hired a service.”

“Jesus,” Fusco says with a laugh, feeling his cheeks burn at the whole concept. “How’d that conversation go?” He pulls away the last of the paper, unveiling a box covered in plush black velvet. Jewelry, maybe?

“There was no conversation. They’re very discreet.”

“Must be nice,” Fusco says as he lifts the lid. 

Oh, it  _ is  _ jewelry, he thinks for just a second. Because it  _ looks  _ like jewelry. It’s fine gold chains on black satin and it doesn’t look like anything he’d touch if Finch wasn’t handing it to him, but it looks kinda like what he knows necklaces to look like. A cord of thin gold chains slithering and tangled together, a clasp at either end and…

Oh.

Those aren’t clasps.

This isn’t a necklace.

“If I may?” Finch says and Fusco feels his cock go hard, feels his face start to burn as he passes the nipple clamps to Finch.

“You want me to take this off?” Fusco asks, plucking at the robe.

“That won’t be necessary,” Finch says. “Just…” Finch reaches for him, gently slips the robe down off his shoulders. “...There. Lovely.” 

The kiss on Fusco’s mouth becomes a tender, testing bite and Finch pulls him in tight, hands sliding all over him, sly and voracious. One second they’re gliding over Fusco’s strong back, the next they’re scratching pink lines over the backs of his legs and his ass, the next they’re at his chest, teasing his nipples between forefinger and thumb with relentless little twists and pulls. The noise that comes out of Fusco makes him hate himself, this quavering, high-pitched off-guard thing that makes him sound so fucking whipped. ‘Cause this gets to him. Finch gets to him. Finch takes note of all the things Fusco isn’t supposed to like and makes him do them and tells him he looks good doing them and Fusco doesn’t know what to do with that, so he goes along with it. And he makes stupid noises sometimes. Like now, when Finch lays his palms flat against Fusco’s chest and starts rolling his thumbs over Fusco’s nipples in firm semi-circles and Finch kisses each whimper away as it comes out of Fusco’s mouth.

“There you are,” Finch murmurs between kisses, gold chain rustling in his hand. “You’re ready.”

Finch tugs one flushed nipple, clamps the end of the chain onto it and Fusco wants to cry out in pain but he can feel silk on either side of his cock and that means he’s hard, that his hard-on is sticking out the front of his too-short, too-flimsy robe, that it’s not quite pain.

Finch sits back to admire his work, Lionel’s face and chest burning red, his cock leaking, his robe in disarray, the chain hanging daintily across his chest like jewelry, like he is some pretty thing. “Lovely,” Finch says again. “Open another?” 

Fusco is speechless, unwilling to move because the weight of the chain is a hell of a thing and even a slight movement sends it sliding and tugging, sends him shivering. Finch has to get his next gift for him, push it into his hands. 

The next gift is a string of soft silicone beads.

“One moment,” Finch says. He stands, rounds the bed, goes to the nightstand. Fusco follows him with his eyes, notes the delicacy of his walk, the way the front of his pants is tented.

“You gonna take your clothes off?” Fusco asks, sounding a little bit bolder than he feels as Finch opens the nightstand drawer and rummages around.

Finch closes the drawer with a prim snap, begins squeezing lubricant from the bottle onto his fingers. “No need,” he says.

He makes Fusco get up on his knees, creeps one hand up under the robe and slides his finger into Fusco’s ass, real easy. This isn’t the production it used to be, the minutes upon minutes of lubrication and coaxing before he would take even one finger without fighting it. Now Finch slides a third finger in just for the hell of it, just to make sure he’s ready, and Fusco only sighs, only leans into Finch and kisses him deep, only cries out when Finch gives the golden chain a gentle tug. 

Finch slicks up the beads and starts guiding them in, slow and easy, bit by bit. Maybe too bit by bit, ‘cause if he struggles even a little bit taking one of the beads, Finch pulls it out again, slides it back in, back out, back in, until it slips in as easy as air slips into his lungs. By the end, Fusco’s got every last one of those beads in his ass and his thighs are shuddering.

“Ready for the next one?” Finch asks him.

Fusco nods, all flushed. “That one there,” he asks, pointing, “near the pillow.”

“Go get it,” Finch says. His fingertips remain poised on the silicone loop at the end of the string of beads.

“Are you, um. You gonna let go of that?”

Finch shakes his head. “Crawl to it, if you please. Slowly,” he adds. “You’re not supposed to pull these out quickly.”

Fusco shivers all over, slides onto his hands and knees and cries out when the chain falls forward, tugs him in new directions. “Oh my god,” he murmurs. He feels sweat on his skin, he feels the robe riding up over his ass.

“Are you alright, Lionel?” Finch asks, all solicitous, like he has nothing to do with it.

“I’m fine,” he says, crawling forward nice and slow. “‘M just fine.”

The first few beads sliding out of him make his arms buckle, makes the nipple clamps bounce and tug and he’s nearly an overstimulated ball of nerves, curled up in the center of the bed. But he recovers, keeps going, and aside from the way the chain swings back and forth with every movement, he thinks he’s keeping his cool.

The next gift is a white, soft sleeve. Fusco slips his fingers into it, feels bumps and ridges and tightness. Finch crawls onto the bed beside him. 

“Lie back, please?” Finch asks, taking the sleeve from him. “You can rest your head on the pillow.”

Fusco obliges, at first fast and then a lot slower, trying not to cry out from the way the chain slides around as he shifts his weight. He lies flat, hands folded on his stomach, robe falling open, cock flushed deep red.

“Very good,” Finch says, gently ruffling his hair. “Legs up, please. The beads need to go back in,” he says, in response to Fusco’s furrowed brow.

But Fusco obliges, pulls his legs up, lies still, breath fluttering as Finch lubes him up again, as Finch pushes the beads in and out of him again, much easier this time but with no less care. His ass is slick, nearly dripping. 

“You’re doing so well,” Finch purrs, gliding a hand over Fusco’s cock by way of reward, and Fusco rolls his hips into it, sighing with relief, but after a second the hand is gone. “You’ll like this,” Finch reassures over his groan of disappointment. He’s pushing his fingers into the sleeve, getting it nice and slick for him. “This is a reward for being so good,”

He slides it slowly, torturously over the head of Fusco’s cock and he screws his eyes shut, throws his head back into the pillow, just lets it happen. It’s tight and wet - maybe overlubed ‘cause there’s hardly any friction, just ridges rippling effortlessly over him, bumps tracing lazy curves down his cock, and the gentle pressure of Finch’s hand on the outside of the sleeve, stroking him smooth and slow. Fusco braces his heels on the mattress, lifts his hips to meet Finch’s hand with shallow, desperate thrusts, legs quivering and he’s really getting somewhere, can feel heat curling low in his belly and a gentle pulling sensation in his balls and he’s thinking he might just come right now when he lifts his hips a little too high and the weight of the chain starts to slide up towards his throat and suddenly his nipples are being tugged in a completely different direction and he’s collapsing back on the bed with a whine.

“Oh dear,” Finch murmurs, setting the sleeve aside. “A little impatient, are we?”

Fusco whimpers, reaches out and rubs softly at Finch’s cock through his trousers by way of a peace offering, only to have his hand gently redirected.

“I’m picking your next present,” Finch says. “I don’t want you to be tempted to touch.” The box he picks is filled with soft silk straps. “Pick two more for while you’re tied up.”

Fusco obliges, sets two gifts aside while Finch ties his ankles to the footboard, leaving enough give that he can bend his knees if he needs to. He considers adjusting the chain to a more comfortable position while he still has his hands untied, but a stern look from Finch makes him think that wouldn’t be in the spirit of the game. He obediently raises his arms so Finch can tie his wrists to the headboard, only cries out a little when the chain shifts further down, pooling against his neck.

“Just one more,” Finch says, winding the last silk strap over his eyes and gently securing it. “Can you see?” he asks.

“A little,” Fusco admits. “It’s a little bit see-through, this close up. You want me to close my eyes?”

Finch bends, presses a kiss to his forehead. “Thank you, dear. That won’t be necessary.”

There’s some shifting then, some shuffling around, and then he can feel Finch crawling over his leg so he can settle between them. He feels Finch’s hands on his thighs, hears Finch sigh contentedly. “Look at you,” he murmurs. “Look how lovely you are.”

Fusco tilts his head into the pillow, feels a blush rising in his cheeks. “Stop it.”

“I will not,” Finch says, resolutely, his clean, manicured nails gliding over Fusco’s thighs, over his ass. “You look edible. Your nipples are the most gorgeous shade of pink. Your ass is so lovely and soft and I love the way it takes my fingers. I love your thick, pretty cock all desperate and dripping. I could play with you like this for hours,” he purrs. Fusco can feel the bed shift, can feel the warm puff of Finch’s breath against his chest as he leans over him. “And I think I will.”

With that, Finch plucks up the chain and tugs it insistently upwards.

It doesn’t go on for hours, Fusco’s pretty sure. He’s pretty sure he couldn’t have held out for hours. But god, it feels like that. There’s no time behind the blindfold, just tides of sensation, rolling in and rolling out and overlapping and eroding his ability to do anything other than cry out and grip the headboard uselessly with his bound up hands. One minute, Finch is toying with the chain, tugging it and twisting it and moving it from side to side or else just holding it up and letting it sway with Fusco’s frantic squirming. Another minute and he’s working those beads in and out and in and out of Fusco’s ass and he thinks he shouldn’t even be able to feel them anymore, he thinks they should be like nothing, but instead they tease him, make him wish for something big and hard to fill him up and stretch him tight. For what feels like scant, bare seconds, Finch strokes him with the sleeve just enough to get him worked up, make him cry out and push his hips in the air and nearly, almost come until Finch takes it away and tugs too hard on the chain and sends him aching again.

Finch has his fingers in Fusco’s ass alongside the beads and is grinding the biggest bead relentlessly into Fusco’s prostate in tight, mean semi-circles and Fusco’s got his head thrown back, his fingers white-knuckling the headboard, thinking  _ maybe _ ,  _ maybe  _ when Finch abruptly removes his fingers, leaves Fusco shuddering into empty air.

“Well,” Finch says over Fusco’s miserable cries. “Let’s see what you picked out.”

He lies shivering, twitching, listening to the sound of wrapping paper crumpling. “Lionel,” Finch says, sweetly after a moment. “Would you like to take a break from the nipple clamps?”

“You gonna do something worse?” Fusco asks, all hoarse and suspicious.

Finch pats his knee. “No, dear. It’s just time for a break.”

Fusco exhales. He’s panting, he realizes, he’s  _ been  _ panting. He nods.

Finch leans over him, unpinches the clamps, and suddenly all the blood rushes back in and Finch is playing with his nipples again, pinching them and twisting them and rubbing them with his thumbs and Fusco’s regretting a lot. “They’re purple, dear,” Finch says over Fusco’s swearing. Fusco can hear the smile in his voice, the smugness. “You really did need a break.”

But he doesn’t stop messing around with them for at least a few minutes, at least until Fusco stops swearing so much.

Then Finch backs off him a little, sits back on his haunches and lets him lie there sweating and quivering and getting his breath back and working himself up into a panic over what’s going to happen next. 

After a long moment, Fusco feels a gentle tickle on his thigh. He twitches, kicks as much as he’s able, but Finch murmurs distractedly, “Don’t kick.”

So he doesn’t kick. He feels the tickle travel down his thigh, over his knee, down his shin, onto his ankle and then all the way back up again.

“What d’you have there?” he asks, curious.

“It’s called a tickler,” Finch says, voice even as he guides it over Fusco’s hips, makes him jump. “The sellers described it as ‘the perfect accessory for tease and titillation’. Which is perhaps overstating it. It is effectively a feather duster.” Finch casually undoes the tie on Fusco’s robe and lets it slip open, leaving the way clear for the tickler to glide over Fusco’s belly and his chest and over his sore nipples, making him arch into the bed with a whine. “But I do intend to tease you mercilessly, so I feel a little overstatement is permissible.” 

Merciless is the wrong word for Finch, probably, because Finch is the one who apologizes if he slaps Fusco on the ass too hard and keeps taking breaks to tell Fusco how lovely he is, but with this thing gliding all over him, setting his nerves all alight as it tickles over his ribs and his throat and the soles of his feet and his nipples that ache if Finch breathes on them too hard and his cock that starts leaking precome if he so much as imagines something touching it, it feels like there’s no fucking mercy in the world and he’s just squirming and twitching and begging and after a while he just hears someone saying over and over “Please let me come please please please” and after he realizes it’s him, it’s his voice, all ragged and desperate.

And finally, it stops.

“You’d like to come?” Finch asks, gently rubbing his legs.

“Please,” Fusco whines. He doesn’t even have the energy to hate himself for whining.

“Thank you for asking so nicely.” He can feel Finch shifting around between his legs. “Let’s see what your last gift is.”

“No more,” Lionel tries to say but his voice is too tired, too dried out. “Please, no more, just let me…”

“Shhhhhhh.” Finch’s hand is on his knee again. “Let’s just see.”

Fusco settles, sweating against the blindfold, desperate for anything while Finch unwraps the last gift. 

After a moment, Finch, in a voice that seems....amused, surprised, intrigued, he’s not sure, says “I’m taking your blindfold off.”

“‘K,” Fusco says, voice all thick, heart beating fast as Finch unwinds the silk over his eyes and suddenly he’s blinking in the light again, looking up at Finch’s face. He’s flushed with arousal and his glasses are all fogged up and he looks a little bit fond.

“Hello,” he says, very sweetly.

“Hey,” Fusco says. He’s wondering if he could get away with leaning up and giving Finch a kiss on the cheek or something ‘cause he looks good to touch right now.

“I’d like to make you come now,” Finch says pleasantly, “with a vibrator, if that’s alright.”

“‘S fine,” Fusco says, although he probably would also have said fine if Finch said “with a buzzsaw” or “with a wasp” or “with a rolling pin” because he almost doesn’t care. “It’s not huge, is it? ‘Cause I don’t think I can...”

Finch is shaking his head already. “It’s perfectly average in terms of size. Nothing you haven’t done before.”

“OK,” Fusco says, nodding. “OK, yeah, fine. No big deal?”

“No big deal,” Finch says. “I just wanted to show it to you before we got started.”

And he shows him the vibrator, slim and curved and shiny and...

Fusco’s jaw drops. “Is that…?”

Finch, casually slicking it up, nods. So fucking pleased with himself.

“That’s not  _ real gold _ .”

“I think you’ll find,” Finch says as he slides the vibrator into Fusco’s slick, ready ass, “that it very much is.”

And then, because Finch needs the last word in everything, he hits a button and the vibrations kick in. 

The thing about Finch is, he studies. He needs to know everything about everything, and when this thing of theirs started, it meant he needed to know everything about Fusco too. Everything about his life and his thoughts and what he liked and his body too, better than Fusco ever knew himself. So he knows he’s dragging that vibrator across Fusco’s prostate, he knows he’s dragging Fusco to orgasm, and Fusco’s moving as best he can, angrily fucking himself onto the vibrator because how dare Finch spend that much money on something this stupid and how dare he use it on Fusco like what kind of sick, beautiful, hilarious joke is this and then suddenly he’s arching back with a way-too-loud moan and he’s coming all over his stomach, all over his chest and he’s twitching, shivering, as the vibrator keeps on buzzing inside of him.

“Jesus Christ,” Fusco moans, flopping onto the mattress. “Why would you pay for something like that?”

Finch keeps right on going, firmly working the vibrator into him with quick, clever twists of his wrist. “I saw it and I wanted to fuck you with it. I didn’t give it much more thought than that.”

“Yeah, I can tell.” Fusco whimpers, twitches as the vibrator rolls over his prostate hard, working a drop of come from his cock. “How much did you pay for it?”

“If I tell you that,” Finch says, “then you really will be angry.” He dials up the vibrations. 

Fusco whines, throws his head back. “I just came.”

“I’d like you to come again for me,” Finch says. “Can you?”

And Fusco isn’t sure he can because he’s feeling pretty fucking wrung out, thanks, and also pretty fucking annoyed and pretty fucking baffled that Finch spent money on a golden dildo just so he could fuck Fusco with it, but Finch said “for me” and he phrased it like a question with his eyes all big behind his glasses, so fuck it, Fusco can try.

He comes so hard he rips two of the silk restraints. He rips the other two lunging for Finch, pinning him flat to the bed.

“Oh dear,” Finch pants, red-faced as Fusco pulls open his vest, pulls down his pants, “Lionel, I don’t think I can.”

“For me,” Fusco growls in his ear, tweaking Finch’s nipples hard through his silky undershirt, “you can try.”

If he wasn’t exhausted, if he wasn’t fucked out, if he didn’t want so badly to curl up in bed with Finch and go to sleep as soon as possible, if getting Finch off wasn’t the smoke-’em-if-you-got-’em situation it is, he would spend the next hour and a half giving Finch a taste of his own medicine. But he’s not so lucky and he is so tired and getting Finch off requires such sustained work that it’s kind of a tease anyway, so he mouths at Finch’s cock and balls through his silky, girly underwear, licking it soaking wet and sticking his hand up the leg to finger him until Finch comes in his shorts.

Which is nice.

“I don’t suppose I could change?” Finch asks as Fusco collapses on top of him with a satisfied shiver.

“Mmm. No can do. You’re gonna have to sit in that all night.”

Finch sighs. “A just punishment, I suppose.” 

Fusco feels Finch’s spent cock throb a little against his belly and he nuzzles against his throat. “Cannot  _ believe  _ you did that.”

“Oh, it’s just a bit of fun,” Finch says, tracing fingers down Fusco’s back. “And quite an apt metaphor.”

“I think so too, but probably not in the same way.” Fusco exhales, rests his head on Finch’s chest. “We gotta make a rule, man.”

“Oh?”

“You’re not allowed to spend more than $100 on something you’re just gonna shove up my ass.”

Finch makes a sound of disgust. “ _ $100 _ . I’m all for imposing limits, but I’m not going to  _ cheap out _ .”

“Jesus. Alright, $200. That enough?”

Finch makes a soft, hesitant sound. “I mean, for  _ most  _ things,” Finch says after a while, “but…”

Fusco groans, buries his face in Finch’s chest. Finch leans down, kisses the crown of his head. “I could be convinced to set a cap at $300. Is that satisfactory?”

“Did that gold thing cost more than $300?” Fusco asks.

“Yes, Lionel,” Finch deadpans. “It cost more than $300.”

“Fine, then.”

They settle for a while, just breathing against each other. Finally, Finch says, “I’m sorry if it upset you.”

Fusco kisses his cheek. “You didn’t upset me,” he murmurs. “You were a fuckin’ sweetheart. It’s just a lot, that’s all.”

Finch flushes, pleased at the kiss on the cheek. Pleased at “sweetheart”. “I just…” He thinks for a while. “I suppose I wanted to make a grand, yet ultimately completely frivolous gesture. Which is what the holidays are all about. I believe.”

“I don’t know about that.” Fusco cuddles into his chest. “But your gifts were really good.”

“Thank you. Yours were lovely too.” Finch is all warm again. He can feel it. “Well, I’ll certainly take your rule to heart.”

“Thanks, babe.”

“That said,” Finch says, very cautiously, “I, of course, can’t return the vibrator, seeing as we’ve used it.”

“Makes sense.”

“So we really ought to keep it.”

“Absolutely, man. You break it, you bought it.”

“Therefore, I feel it’s only right that we use it very, very frequently, in order to get our money’s w-” and that’s all he gets out before Fusco smacks him with a pillow.


	7. December 26

He wakes up ‘cause the sun’s too bright, and he almost can’t believe it. But that’s the way it is sometimes, the morning after it snows. Light bouncing off the white sky and the white ground and the white water until it’s all blinding.

He can’t believe he’s not cold.

That is one of the hidden perks of bunking with Finch, aside from all the other, more obvious perks. For every night spent freezing his ass off on stakeout, there’s a morning in a pristine apartment that the city outside can’t touch. 

Fusco slides out from underneath Finch’s hand on his back and wraps the throw at the foot of the bed around himself anyway. Seems like the kind of thing you should do when there’s that much snow outside the morning after Christmas. Get wrapped up. Be cozy. Even if you just had your brains fucked out.

He limps blearily to the kitchen, braving the cool linoleum on the soles of his feet. He gets out the deep saucepan, the ingredients for cider, and puts them on to boil. As the perfume of cloves, of cinnamon, of apples fills the kitchen, he gets a garbage bag and does the rounds in the living room, picking up balls of crumpled wrapping paper. He straightens up the living room, puts all their gifts together in orderly piles. He and his trash bag make their way into the bedroom again and he picks up the wrapping paper on the floor, wonders what the hell is in the rest of all these little boxes, gets a little thrill out of knowing he’ll find out sooner or later.

“You left,” Finch accuses blearily from the bed.

Fusco bends to kiss his head, smooth back his wild morning hair. “I’ll be back,” he says. “I’ll bring cider.”

“I love you,” Finch murmurs into the pillow.

Fusco walks away with his ears burning. 

He returns, as promised, with cider, along with eggs and bacon and an orange he split in half, and a cleaner, more polished Finch greets him with a kiss, murmuring, “This very nearly excuses your absence.”

“I love you too,” Fusco says against his mouth.

They eat breakfast in bed and watch the snow, the streets below.

“You have plans for today?” Fusco asks.

“I do not,” Finch says. “And I’m in no particular hurry to go outside.”

“Me neither. We, uh.” Fusco inclines his head in the direction of the gifts on the floor. “We have a lot to work through.”

“We do indeed,” Finch says. “Are you up to it?”

“Probably need a little while,” Fusco admits. 

“Me too.” Finch stretches out his leg, lets it brush against Fusco’s. “We never made cookies,” he says after a moment. “That’s customary, isn’t it?”

“You wanna?” Fusco says. “I think I got flour and sugar and everything in the cupboards.”

Finch smiles shyly. “I don’t see why not.”

They get showered first, and get dressed mostly, and within the hour Fusco’s improvising something that’s a bit like sugar cookies and Finch is grumbling over a slab of dough, trying to make it smooth and yielding in his hands. And he’s not having a lot of luck but he’s got flour on his nice shirt and flour in his hair and a perfect little white thumbprint on his glasses and when he looks up, Fusco must be mooning at him, because Finch just says, “What is it?”

“I was just thinking we gotta do this again next year,” Fusco says.

Finch smiles bigger than maybe he’s used to. “I was thinking something rather similar.”

The cookies burn.

It doesn’t matter. 


End file.
